Realgate
by TechTeamAI
Summary: If only television writers also studied the physics of space weapons before writing science fiction shows... This is what happens when someone with equivalent, but properly applied tech, encounters the universe of Stargate. Space battles no longer take place at eyeball distances, they take place a light-seconds in range. The galaxy will never be the same again. Dead.
1. Chapter 1: The Arrival

Sheppard looked out the window of his cloaked jumper at the alien intruder: a plain, white cylinder with two large rings just inwards of either end, also white. A set of four radiators, set at ninety degrees to each other filled the space between the rings.

"Unknown small craft, we see you. You're already way too close, and we have a point-defence lock on you. Uncloak, cut power, and prepare to be taken aboard."

"So, Andos, are you sure you want to do this?" asked Meris, standing in a small starport waiting room.

"Yes, I'm sure. Besides, I already forked myself. It's not that often that you get to tell the government when you plan to die and pass on your assets to your fork."

"Dying?"

"Look at it this way. I'm going into a completely other universe! That we can't get information from, and the only promise that I'll survive is that the other universe is the similarity of physics and the vast distances between stars. Also, I can't go back, ever, because we only know the targeting information for this other universe."

"Now that you say it that way, it really does sound like dying."

"Nevermind. I came back to life already."

Andos saw himself walk in.

"Hey, bro. Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Yeah, I'm sure. Are you offering to switch places? We are, after all, the same person."

"Well, one of us has to stay. While I don't really want to 'die', I'm fine with the adventure."

"It helps not being really dead, just dead with a fork."

"Andos, whichever one is going, are you ready to get going?"

"Yep," said Andos. "Let's go, and I'll stay home."

Meris and Andos walked towards the boarding lounge for the shuttle. The shuttle was a specially designed and manufactured exploration shuttle, designed specially for this mission. It was powerful, agile, and well-armed. The sleek, almost bird-like lines of the shuttle quickly rose through the atmosphere on its fusion torch, rising to meet Andos' ship, the _Going and Staying Gone_. The ship was the standard design for a frigate: a main hull, cylindrical, with spherical caps on either end, then two drive rings, large and bulky, mounted just inboards of the spherical caps, with radiators, weapons, and other equipment being mounted inside the volume defined by the rings, and on the caps, but no further out than the distance from the rings to the hull. The ship was painted a uniform, sleek white, and was fairly bristling with weapons, leaning heavily on Gauss weapons and lasers, and less heavy on missiles or torpedoes. Another striking feature was a pair of two long, cylindrical tubes on either side of the craft, outside of the rings. These tubes were very rough, and had not been painted.

"So, you folks only gave me a frigate?"

"Don't worry, Andos. This frigate will be more than enough. It's got a shuttlecraft in it, and that shuttlecraft has a whole planetary base prefab in there, along with an exploration vehicle or two. You've got a whole set of personal gear, too."

"Power armour?"

"Yup, and a Gauss rifle."

"Atlantis, Sheppard. I've been detected by the alien craft. It's still staying in the outer solar system, for now."

"Unknown small craft, we know where you are – even though you're not emitting any heat, we can still feel your mass."

"Did you just call me fat?" Sheppard muttered. "Unknown ship, identify yourself. You're in our space."

"Unknown small craft, you identify. You're in our inner point defence perimeter."

"Unknown ship, bullshit. I'm nowhere near you."

"Whoa!" Sheppard yelled, as his headphones suddenly screeched with a loud burst of jamming, before settling down back into slience.

"Unknown small craft, heave to."

"Delfey dock, this is the _Going and Staying Gone_. Request permission to undock."

" _Staying Gone_ , permission granted. Proceed on indicated course to dock safety limit."

"Acknowledged."

Sheppard wrenched his jumper around, heading away from the ship at great speed, accelerating as fast as he could. Mental alarms blared as his ship was hit by a large laser blast, dealing moderate damage.

"Unknown small craft, that was our navigational lidar. Do you want us to start using real weapons?"

Sheppard didn't answer, and started to jink and dodge as best as he could.

"Unknown small craft, heave to and prepare to be taken aboard."

Sheppard continued to accelerate away.

"So be it."

Alarms blared in the cockpit as a drive pod was destroyed with accompanying explosion.

"Damn!" Sheppard cursed, as he struggled to stop the puddle jumper from spinning out.

"Unknown small craft, heave to or we will fire for effect."

"Atlantis, Sheppard. I'm under attack by the alien ship."

"Lastra system control, this is the _Going and Staying Gone_. Request permission to engage exotic ship drive system."

" _Staying Gone_ , Lastra syscon. Permission granted. You have two light-minutes clearance in all directions. Good luck."

"Lastra syscon, _Staying Gone_. Copy permission. Thanks for your help. Goodbye."

The _Going and Staying Gone_ began spooling up its drive system, its reactor pumping energy into hydrogen plasma, its generators taking that energy back out in the form of electricity, which was fed into the two attached cylinders. Unfortunately, these were single-use devices, but if the mathematics were worked out properly, they would be able to propel a ship into another universe.

The two drive tubes used the electrical energy given to slowly bend space-time, pushing the ship slowly 'kata', or deeper into a gravity well. The space surrounding the ship distorted, and the ship started to redshift – the intense gravity well was sapping the energy out of escaping photons.

Suddenly, the gravity well was too deep for even light to escape, and the _Going and Staying Gone_ was, according to mathematics and physics, no longer in this universe. The drives kept pushing the ship further and further kata, before in a final burst of energy, the drive tubes slammed the ship so far kata that the ship emerged, very far in the 'ana', or up-gravity direction in another universe. The drive tubes themselves were destroyed, but the ship's regular engines insulated the ship and its only occupant from the effects of the transition.

The ship quickly dropped from its position, far ana, back down to the normal level it should be at, the large distortion in space-time slowly fading away as the ship settled into this universe. The ship then jettisoned the remains of its drive tubes, and began searching for a viable star system in which to travel to.

"Unknown small craft, heave to _now_."

Sheppard cut power to his engines, before sending another message to Atlantis.

"Atlantis, Sheppard. I've been forced to surrender by the alien ship."

The _Going and Staying Gone_ found a viable star system in which to build a base, identifying a system with two very habitable planets, plus a scattering of barren rocks, gas giants, and moons. Andos decided to go to that system to start off. So far, there had been no signs of life detected, but that wasn't too surprising.

Sheppard's puddle jumper floated in space, and the large, impossibly agile ship aligned its boat bay with the jumper, ready to take in into the ship.

With a bright flash of light, the ship emerged, near a marginal-habitability moon of a gas giant in the outer areas of the solar system. Andos noted the similarity to the planet he had left just a few days prior.

The ship alerted Andos to an incoming small craft, launched from the planet, and approaching on a brachistochrone towards his ship, going for a zero-zero intercept with his ship.

Sheppard's puddle jumper slowly floated nearer and nearer the ship, before mechanical arms reached out and grabbed the jumper, setting it down in a large space, and the bay doors slammed closed, a his of air revealed the chamber to have been depressurized before.

Andos watched as the small craft closed ever closer, apparently emitting no infrared radiation, but its mass and gravity drive emissions still betrayed its position. It drew ever closer, passing the ten light-second mark at which it was polite to identify oneself, passing the five light-second mark at which identification became almost obligatory, but only if you were a warship, the drawing closer, past the one light-second mark, which was the traditional small craft traffic control zone, then passing the one-quarter light-second mark, which marked the inner point defence perimeter. Andos saw that the ship had a hard lock on the craft.

"Unknown small craft, we see you. You're already way too close, and we have a point-defence lock on you. Uncloak, cut power, and prepare to be taken aboard."

Sheppard stepped out of the puddle jumper, into a large hangar bay with only one other small craft in it – a bird-like shuttle. Looking around, he didn't see anyone, but at the other end of the hangar, a door opened, and Andos, in a full suit of battle armour, stepped through, rifle at the ready.

"Drop your weapon!" Andos yelled, and Sheppard dove for cover within the jumper.

Sheppard fired his pistol four times, and hit Andos right in the centre of mass four times, four wonderful ten point shots. If only Andos had weaker armour: the bullets pinged off of his armour, and Andos holstered his weapon and moved into hand-to-hand range.

Sheppard struck first, an admirable attempt to grapple Andos, but even though Andos was weaker then Sheppard out of his armour, he was wearing a suit of powered armour, letting him multiply his strength many times over. Sheppard was thrown to the ground by Andos, who just stood there.

"So, mister, who are you?" Andos asked.

"What's it to you?" Sheppard replied.

"Well, let's just say that I don't really trust people who are determine to sneak up on me, even try to breach my point defence perimeter."

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

"Let me put it this way, real simple. The distance you were watching me from? Too close. Way too close. Have some sense of personal space. Nice OTV, by the way. A bit sluggish, but the acceleration sure was good."

"Thanks. Do you mind telling me what you're doing here?"

"Oh, I'm just exploring."

"Great. So am I. Now... take me to your leader."


	2. Chapter 2: The Swarm

"Take me to your leader," Andos said, watching Sheppard slowly getting up from being thrown on to the deck of Andos' starship.

"Oh great. An alien with a sense of humour."

"No, really, I'd like to talk to whoever is in charge of your, er, expedition."

"We're not letting you onto Atlantis."

"Then, I guess your leader will just have to come to me. We really need to talk."

"No way. We're not doing that."

"Okay. You be my messenger then. You look like humans. I'm a human too. You look like you've got good technology. So do I. I only shot at you because you were too close. I didn't try to kill you, in fact, I tried not to kill you. Here's the deal. I'm new here, and I'm friendly. From what I can see, you folks have no sense of what you can really do with the stuff you have on hand."

"That's because most of it is Ancient."

"Great. Call an archaeologist, reverse engineer it!"

"No, built by the Ancients."

"So?"

"Look, you folks have gotten the blueprints for alien stuff, you should be able to leverage your scientists to figure out how to use it."

"We're keeping the existence of aliens classified until-"

"Yeah, right. It won't cause a panic, but keeping it secret then having that secret burst will."

"No-one's going to be doing the talking."

"Maybe not. You've got my message. Go."

A few hours later, Andos was sitting in the jumper, talking with Director Woolsey. The previous conversation had not gone well. Andos had given up on trying to get these humans to see some sense.

"Director, while you may be very capable, let me remind you that I am the one who holds the advantage here. Despite your possession of archaeological relics, I will not hesitate to destroy your artifact."

"Are you threatening me?"

"Yes, director, I am. Your government is corrupt, and you really don't deserve to have whatever technology you do. I am going to be leaving, and I hope that you won't follow me. I was sent on a mission of peaceful exploration. I intend to enforce peace."

Andos's cruiser slowly spun up its drives, then its light-flare suddenly elongated and faded.

"Director, enemy ship has left the system."

Andos sat thinking. These humans weren't bad, just misinformed, but their government was. They were keeping modern technology out of the hands of their populace, and allowing other humans to be killed because they didn't want their citizens to have access to their old technology. Andos knew that he couldn't intervene in the human governments reliably, but he could protect the humans. The data they gave indicated that they planned on committing mass genocide to prevent mass genocide. Andos had a different idea, but this would take time, and time is something that he didn't have. But, he could make time. He had grabbed a copy of the human data, and had torn through the encryption protecting it. Time travel could not be used – it would kill a universe. He had to do something, however. He remembered an idea that his people once had. He would have to use it.

He set his ship on a course for an uninhabited system not on the Stargate network. He had work to do. His ship set down on the planet gently, under rocket thrust. It would not leave again. Andos had scanned the planet from orbit – it was a dead world, perfect for his plan. It has been an idea his people had for a long time, but due to the limitations of their physics, they couldn't carry it out. Now, Andos had the information and the engineering to carry out this plan. He just had to die first.

Then, he prepared a set of universal assemblers, and uploaded a program into them. He shut down his ship, save for the medical bay. He sat down into the surgical chair, and tapped a four digit code into the controller on the chair's arm. A cover descended over the chair.

Outside, on the planet's surface, a stream of drones in various shapes ans sizes flooded out of the ship, disassembling the two warp rings and laying them down on the surface. More drones of flooded out of the ship, and started disassembling and building. A clump of six drones, around human sized, slowly picked up a box about the size of a chair, and carefully disassembled it. Within the box lay a body, which was reverently placed into a rocket that had been built minutes prior. The rocket launched.

Among the larger drones were smaller drones, and the totality of the drone swarm ranged from a few elephant-sized drones down to a multitude of nanomachines. Together, they started to flatten the ground around the ship. They were fruitful and multiplied. The drones started grabbing materials out of the ground, powering themselves from the ship's engine core. They had a mission to complete, but first, they had to get the numbers to complete it. The swarm doubled in size every thirty minutes. It started eating the surface of the planet. Then, it started building. The planet's crust, half-scoured, started being forged into ships. A fleet was being born.

The seething sea of drones had settled down into a series of built-up buildings, mostly power plants, surrounded by an ocean of nanomachines. Each machine alone was hardly intelligent, but together, they were scary smart. The ships that left the planet were linked to the planet's surface through several bits of reverse-engineered Ancient technology. Subspace proved to be useful to an intelligence that had developed in a world where faster-than-light communications were carried out with messenger ships.

The combined Atlantis fleet completed their hyperspace jump into Asuras, and immediately began to fire weapons. The Asurans were prepared, and fought back. Suddenly, a fleet of millions of ships dropped into the system from warp space, and a subspace message was sent to both the replicator and Atlantis fleets.

"I'm back."


	3. Chapter 3: Pius Dei

"All fleets, this is Andos. Cease fire immediately."

Caldwell, on the Daedalus, replied, "Like hell we will, Andos. We've been briefed on you!"

"Colonel, I'm not feeling too forgiving, You were planning on committing mass genocide."

There was a brief silence as AR-1 and the Colonel conferred.

"Andos, this is Doctor McKay. Where did you get the ships?"

"Get? I made these."

"You've got thousands of them!"

"Millions. After all, a planet is such a small thing when you've got self-replicating drones."

"You've turned into a replicator!"

"Please. I'm still myself. I just happen to have a bigger body."

"We're still not trusting you."

"Well, I still think you're stupid. You've got working sentient nanotechnology, and you use it to kill a species? You've got all sorts of useful technology that you keep hidden for all sorts of rationalizations. If this is what it means to be human, I don't want to be human."

"The replicators are killing humans!"

"And I'm stopping them without killing them."

"How?"

"How much computing power do the replicators have?"

"About a planet's worth."

"So, I could hack them to let them not be aggressive, right?"

"Sure. You'd need a planet."

"Well, I have most of a planet."

"Right."

"Even though I refuse to use acasual logic processors, I still have quantum computing, so a little edit to their base code to let them have choice in what they do is well within my reach."

"They can still choose to attack us?"

"Yes. They can."

"Why don't you stop them, then?"

"I'd be no better than the Alterans, who created a sentient species as weapons, to be used. What I'm doing is restoring free will to a species that has lost it."

Suddenly, the Replicator starships all turned, heading towards the planet.

"Human and wraith ships, stand down _now_ or be destroyed."

Todd broke in on the channel, "How do you propose to do that? You are outside of weapons range."

Just a heartbeat later, a single projectile came zooming towards the Wraith ship, passing neatly through the hole in the middle of the ship.

"That was me trying to show off. Do you want me to fire for effect? I have millions of ships. You have barely a hundred."

Andos's ships slowly started to spool up their warp drives.

"Everyone, beware. A new Power is in this galaxy."

The small armada dropped out of warp in orbit of Andos's home system. Andos had also been busy back at home. The planet had been slowly pulled apart, being slowly turned into a part of a Dyson swarm. The other planets in the system were slowly being ripped apart for matter as well – a Dyson swarm was something that took up a lot of mass. Good thing there were a lot of stuff in the solar system, and a lot of stuff he could get from other parts. He split off a group of ships to start taking moons from the gas giants in the system. Now – he had to think about his ships. His main enemy would likely be the Wraith. Energy weapons would be the most effective there. The normal range limitations of energy weapons would be inconsequential. Drive systems – hyperdrives were quick to charge up, but they were terribly slow, and weren't self-sustaining, so he kept the warp drive. A standard subspace communications array, the usual two-ring warp systems, and plasma shields. A limited stock of missiles. The internals space was fitted with even more machinery, enough for the ship to spawn a new drone swarm. He finalized the design. Half of his fleet started to churn as the machinery within them warped and changed to become the new design. The other half would go through the change later.

Andos looked at his domain. An ever-growing swarm of small ship-satellites, some ripping apart the rocky planets and asteroids for raw materials, some siphoning gas from the gas giants to use as fuel. His mind was already fractured into many pieces, each small portion running a particular aspect of the large fleet, and in charge of all those bits of himself was himself again, setting the general goals for his swarm. Andos's mind was incredibly vastened, to the point that the intelligence in charge of running one of his drone ships had greater-than-human complexity.

"Sheppard, that star there, it suddenly got dimmer, by, like, a lot."

"I know, Rodney, but what does that mean?"

"It either means that someone is killing stars, or that someone is using a star to make stuff."

"What can you make out of a star?"

"It's matter. You can make any other bit of matter with it. It just takes a lot of energy, which stars, and presumably Andos, all have a lot of."

"Do you think it could be Andos?"

"He's the only power with enough to make a Dyson swarm."

"Rodney, you just gave me a load of technobabble."

"Okay, so a Power is a really powerful person – the Ancients as a whole are a Power, so are the wraith, as a whole. Andos is more powerful than the Ancients. A Dyson swarm basically captures the energy of the sun. I don't think he's using the swarm for power, but for industrial capacity."

"What's this all mean?"

"We should send the Daedalus to go check it out, but we have to play nice. He's got the capability to throw stars around."

"Why didn't you start with that?"

"I thought you knew!"

A hyperspace window opened at the edge of the system, and it was immediately greeted with a subspace hail.

"Welcome, Daedalus, to my home."

Sheppard replied, "Hello, Andos."

"Why, Sheppard! Hello! It's been so long."

"Andos, it's only been a few days."

"Do you know how long that is in my subjective experience?"

"No, I don't."

"It feels like it's been decades."

The Daedalus could see the billions on billions of ships swarming around the system at sublight speeds. They also counted many, many other ships in the system, and most disturbingly, four mobile moons.

"You're here on a diplomatic mission."

"Yes, we are. At-

"Atlantis wants to open formal relations with me, yes. I'm flattered that you would call me a Power."

"So-"

"No. Not until you release the technology you have to the humans on Earth. Let them have access to the technology you have access to."

"But-"

"I could take over by force, but that wouldn't be nice. Also, you can predict what a bacterium can do, can't you? I'm many times smarter than you are."

"How-"

"You see all the craft in this system? Every one has a mind on board, and all of them – they're me. I'm massively distributed. I know what you're going to ask next, 'Am I a replicator?' The answer to that is 'no'. I'm not like them. Oh, you should see them. I'm talking to them about merging them into me. It would be useful, just for the ZPMs. I'd be able to not eat as much matter every day."

"You don't use ZPMs?"

"No. Direct mass-energy conversion."

"How come you're letting us ask questions?"

"Because interrupting someone is rude, if fun."

"Can you share your technology?"

"Not until you learn to share yours."

"But, it would-"

"Cause a mass panic? I've done the calculations, twice over. Would you like to see the notes?"

"No-"

McKay broke into the channel, "Yes! We would!"

"Here."

A brief burst of data transmission later, McKay was looking over the data in his lab.

"I'll let you think about this. Feel free to stay here. You're completely safe here."


	4. Chapter 4: New Power

"You're completely safe here," said Andos.

"Not in a hostile system, we aren't," Sheppard shot back.

"I'm not hostile. I just happen to be very powerful and very determined to improve the quality of life of as many people as I can."

"We just happen to be in the way."

"No, your government is. There's a difference. Besides, I don't hurt people for not helping. I only hurt them for trying to stop me, and I'm a strong believer in not stepping in without consent of the parties involved."

"So, what happened around Asuras, then?"

"I assumed, quite rightly, that the Asurans would like to continue existing, since they fought your armada, and that their aggression code was limiting their free will. I preserved their species, and disabled their aggression code."

"You talk about the Asurans as if they were alive."

"They are. They are just as much alive as I am, thank you very much. I just happen to have a bigger body than they do."

"Where is your body, for that matter?"

"Here."

"What?"

"Look, your body – it's the meat-sack you control, right? My body is every single ship in this system that I have a part of my mind on, and therefore, control."

"You were a human!"

"I am. Look, I'm still the same person, I've just changed my bodily appearance, and improved my brain a bit."

"I don't think you're still the same person."

"Would it be better if you talked to me in person?"

"Yes!"

"Fine. I'm sending a small craft to dock."

"We'll be ready."

The small cylindrical craft slid smoothly into the bay of the Daedalus, then neatly stopped. A door in the craft opened, and Andos stepped out, wearing a simple flight suit, carrying no weapons, and looking amused, and perfectly at ease. Waiting there to greet him was Colonel Sheppard, and the rest of AR-1.

"Quite the distinguished greeting party," Andos said, starting the conversation.

"We're just going to ask a few questions," Sheppard said.

"Alright, ask away, but I reserve the right not to answer."

"How did you do all of this?"

"You know, I'll tone down the explanation so that you, Sheppard, can understand it, so that Dr. McKay there, can't use it to copy exactly what I've done."

Andos gave McKay a meaningful look, which was returned.

"I uploaded my mind to a neural network hosted by these nanomachines, and started using that industrial capability for my own purposes," Andos stated, giving a nugget of clear, simple, concise, yet utterly useless information. "I used technology that you have, just in a smarter way."

The meeting soon concluded, as neither side was willing to give way. The Daedalus left soon after, having taken scans of the entire system before doing so. As they were leaving, Andos gave them more detailed scans of the planets as they used to be.

Back on Atlantis, the Director was in his office, engaged in a serious conversation with the IOA. Sheppard had been called down to McKay's lab.

"John. Guess what I found!" McKay's face was bright with excitement.

"Spit it out, Rodney."

"We can copy Andos's ships."

"Rodney. Can you say that again, without the joke?"

"Fine. We can't copy his power source, nor his magic warp drive, but we can copy the weapons, the mechanical bits. And, I figured out how to do it. I just need a spare solar system."

"You won't blow this one up, will you?"

"No, I'll just use the planets to make ships. Problem is, our ships are badly designed."

"Badly designed?"

"Yes. They're good for the weapons we have, but the limitations we have for materials and what not aren't being properly accounted for. We're going to have to hire, oh, half of the science fiction authors who are actually scientists to get a good design."

"Rodney, are you high?"

"Nope. I figured that the IOA would say no, but they know that Andos is a Power. Here's our chance to become a Power ourselves. Imagine – the human species, respected by everyone as a Power, dealt with as an equal by Andos."

"Talk to Woolsey. He'll probably tell you to talk to the IOA. This is way above our pay grades."

"Yeah, yeah, I know."

Andos had completed his Dyson swarm. Several factory nodes, to each generator node, within which was contained a heavily modified ZPM. The factory nodes were churning out ships at a prodigious rate, mostly small swarm-craft, but some heavier ships were added into the mix. Soon, someone would reverse-engineer his technology or use their own technology to develop ships like his. He would be ready.

The IOA deliberated McKay's proposal, weighing the benefits of becoming a Power with the risks associated with the ascent to Power. They discussed, they debated, they conferred, and they decided. Earth would become a Power. McKay would be allowed to hire whoever he needed, and he would be given free reign in those decisions. He would have as much funding as he needed. Powerdom was too good to give up, no matter the price. The IOA further resolved to build up their military to eliminate Andos as a threat, and wipe out the Goa'uld, and the Wraith along the way.

Once the decision came to McKay, he immediately gated to Earth and started hiring. All of the eminent scientists whose work had any bearing on ship design were hired. An underground network of hired scientists started to be formed, an undertaking on the scale of the Manhattan Project. McKay arranged for the scientists to work on Atlantis. He called the whole thing Project Enterprise – the Extremely Near Term Extreme Range Projectile Replacement Interstellar Ship Experiment. The design was finalized quickly, opting for a cylindrical hull with a hemisphere on the fore end, and an engine array on the aft end. The hyperdrive and shields were settled on, but with one key modification – six separate shield generators were used, one for each aspect of the ship – fore, aft, ventral, dorsal, port, and starboard. The reactors were buried deep within the core of the ship, as was the minimal crew area – room for one pilot and only one pilot. Inertial dampeners were heavily invested in here. Thick layers of amour plating designed to ablate away under energy weapons fire were added, and a new railgun design was decided on for the primary weapons systems. Laser designs for point defence were suggested, and were implemented, but backed up with more conventional autocannons for point defence. The first ship was to be piloted by Colonel John Sheppard, and was named the _Enterprise_ , after the project's name. McKay had suggested to the IOA that he be allowed to upload his mind into a nanite matrix, but the IOA firmly opposed that decision, so, for now, the pilots of these craft would remain human and present within the craft.


	5. Chapter 5: Power War I

McKay and Sheppard were watching from the bridge of the Daedalus as the missile, containing within a specially programmed nanite payload, sped off towards the surface of the asteroid they had selected for this experiment – an asteroid that was part of some anonymous star system with nothing in particular of interest in it.

"T minus thirty seconds." McKay reported. "Retro burn is good, nanite integrity is holding, power plant is online. T minus twenty."

"Rodney, will you cut that out?"

"What?"

"I know you're excited and all, but if this doesn't work, we'll be in a lot of trouble."

"No, we won't," McKay stated, patronizingly, "why would we be?"

"Because when Andos finds out what we're trying to do, he'll come here and smite us."

"No, he won't. First of all, he's not so big on smiting, you notice that he's never tried to kill anyone? Second, he believes strongly in free will. We do have the free will to do this. He can't interfere. Not yet. Not until we cross a line somewhere, and by that point, we should be ready to take him on. Oh, the nanites have landed and they're going. You'll have your ship within the day. The nanites then take a pause and build up their strength, and we send them the final design to churn out."

"So, Rodney, how do we test out this first ship?"

"Andos. He'll help."

"Isn't he our enemy?"

"He's the Power that we're going to take on. Do you know anyone else who has ships that we could actually test ours against?"

"No, but he won't help, and you're not allowed to ask him to help."

"Right. So, I've decided to put your ship against a simulated one of his. I've been able to get enough out of the sensor data we got to build up a set of simulated ships."

"A set?"

"Of course. I made simulations based on the most pessimistic to the most optimistic assumptions for abilities. Which one do you want to start off with?"

"Hardest first."

"Of course."

Sheppard's ship, the _Enterprise_ , flew like a drunk man was flying. Or, as the designers had put it, she was drunkwalking. Her various engines varied the magnitude and direction of her acceleration, causing her to randomly fluctuate around a baseline course that Sheppard had chosen. Her weapons fired automatically, no human capable of the convoluted mathematics that governed fire control in space.

A series of laser pulses streaked in, out of the dark, undetectable and themselves the earliest sign of their own existence, and missed by several ship lengths, an unimaginably short margin given the massive ranges involved. The next burst came only moments later, closer once more. Sheppard's craft returned fire, in controlled bursts from each of his weapons, staggered to ensure that the stream of fire was constant, yet his weapons had a sufficiently lax duty cycle to allow them to radiate heat into space. It was not enough. Sheppard's craft and the simulated craft were evenly matched, in terms of mass and volume, but the simulated craft blithely ignored constraints like G-force, or even the human mind's preference for two-dimensional thinking. Finally, a burst of shots hit, shredding the shield of the small craft. They flickered, and only brief seconds later, a second salvo hit. Computers calmly noted the progress of the damage through the ship's armour, and noted the excess energy being deposited. Further shots started hitting, with even greater accuracy, and the small craft was torn to shreds. It became sluggish, and a final series of shots slammed home, breaching reactor containment. The ship went dark, and computers calmly reset to ready operating status. Sheppard was lank with sweat, having pulled around ten G's during some phases of the combat.

"Sheppard, this is McKay. Looks like you lost."

"I'll be fine. Just let me recover and I'll try again on a lower difficulty."

"This is the easiest it gets, Sheppard."

"What?"

"You asked for the hardest it could get. This is the easiest that I think Andos would be to fight, and that's still pushing it."

"So, what was I up against?"

"Your ship, except that it doesn't have to worry about G-forces, it has lasers, and it has a plasma-based shield of equal strength to yours. I was 'piloting' it through a telemetry link."

"Did I hit you?"

"No, not really. You splashed against my shields a bit, but nothing got through."

"So, what you're saying is, I'm the weakest link?"

"Seems so."

"Back to the drawing board?"

"No, not yet. I've got a backup plan. We can use a remote control link from a carrier ship."

"Where do we get one of those?"

"Well, we've been oh-so-graciously given this asteroid, right?"

"Right..."

"Let's use it, then."

"Can you?"

"Yes. I can."

Slowly, Andos got his production going. His star system, now turned into a Dyson swarm, was churning out swarmships very quickly. He had assigned half of the ships to gather material, and the other half to be ready to fight. On his list of targets – the Wraith. They fed on humans, their so-called life essence, but what did that mean? He could solve this problem, after all, billions of brains linked together can do a lot of thinking. The humans, however, they viewed him as a threat. They would attack him, and he had to be ready.

The ships, nestled carefully in their asteroid mothership, the Intrepid, were silent, waiting, as the carrier slid through space, having emerged from hyperspace somewhat further from its destination than it normally would. Their destination: a human world recently visited by one of Andos's ships. Upon exiting the system, they immediately saw a swarmship exiting warp, headed for the planet.

Notably, this star system was missing a gas giant. McKay, nominal captain of the _Intrepid_ , hailed the swarmship.

"Andos, what did you do with the gas giant?"

"I bought it."

"How much did you pay?"

"My best efforts to protect them against the Wraith. I see you're in a nanomanufactured asteroid ship. Very nice. You're hooked up directly to the ship systems, and you're flying it, right?"

"No."

"The folks back home might have a word to say about a civilian commanding a military ship, captain. Has your mind been vastened?"

"Yes, it has."

"Good. Who's flying the drones? Sheppard, et al., right?"

"Sure."

"So, you, a civilian, are the captain of a military supercarrier, and are commanding USAF folks in combat."

"About right."

"Very nice. Where's Caldwell?"

"The Daedalus is on defence."

"So, you're on offence?"

"Yep. You tricked them. Give them back the planet or I'm going to start shooting."

"I would like to formally warn you, under the Accord of Powers, from my home galaxy, your threat could be considered an act of war. You fight under different rules, but we are both Powers unto ourselves."

"I have my orders."

"Well, captain, I consider you to be a part of Earth, and as a fellow Power, you have declared war. I expect you folks have more asteroid ships brewing, with many more crews ready to start using them, likely recruited from the Navy or USAF elite, so I won't feel too bad about trying to invade your galaxy."

The Intrepid could detect the swarmship powering up its plasma shields, and it could detect the faint tugging at space as it started to activate its drive systems. McKay launched the drones, and once they were clear, he started firing on the swarmship. It started dodging just as he opened fire, in blatant contravention of the laws of relativity. The swarmship returned fire as best it could, stabbing out through the million or so kilometers between the ships. Andos noted that he ought to start carrying missiles aboard his ships, to better extend the ranges. The drones started to trade shots with the swarmship, and the swarmship, being out numbered, fell quickly when the asteroid entered the fray. The killing shots neatly penetrated the plasma bubble surrounding the ship and shattered the hull of the ship. The ship's reactor detonated in a modest explosion, fueled only by the high density, high-energy plasma suddenly released from containment. Andos had started spooling up the warp drives on half of his ships in the field, and started arming his home ships with missiles. His mobile moons he left in his Dyson sphere as a defensive force, but he started agglomerating some swarmships into larger, physically connected formations.

Andos also sent out a universe-jumper ship.


End file.
